Podcasts about Las Vegas, Nevada

Three of the shows on this page exist to argue about the Las Vegas Raiders, and in the stretch of episodes shown they are all arguing about the same two names: Kirk Cousins and Fernando Mendoza. That is the loudest thing in the city's podcasting. Right behind it is an odder habit. Las Vegas shows keep retelling the city's own founding, and the same figures recur across shows that otherwise share nothing: Billy Wilkerson and the Flamingo, Kirk Kerkorian's land deal, Howard Hughes at the Desert Inn, Oscar Goodman arriving nearly broke. Between those poles sit the shows about living here rather than visiting: a local news program on nonprofits and housing, a downtown business show, a real estate team recapping weekend outings, and interview shows with the people who run the showrooms.

What Las Vegas is

Las Vegas is Nevada's largest city, set in the Mojave Desert at the state's southern tip. It is known for the casino resorts of the Strip and the convention and entertainment economy built around them, and in the last decade it has become a major-league sports town, home to the NHL's Golden Knights and the NFL's Raiders.

The Raiders, told three ways

The three Raiders shows differ mostly in who is talking. On Bleav in Raiders it is Stanford Routt, and the talk is scheme: in the clip from "Raiders defensive changes" he works through whether Max Crosby fits better in a 4-3 or a 3-4, calls him elite against the run, and explains why a 3-4 fails without a nose tackle who can command double teams. In another clip he argues the Raiders should not trade out of No. 1 unless someone offers "three first round picks" or "something crazy". Titles like "Cousins should start" and "Mendoza's pro day" say where the show's attention has been.

Locked On Raiders - Daily Podcast On The Las Vegas Raiders, with Your Boy Q, is more about the organization's mood. Its clips have Kirk Cousins describing what Clint Kubiak demands of the team, "ride for the brand" and "shocking effort", and a story about Tom Brady FaceTiming Cousins at a youth baseball practice to lay out the Raiders' vision. Q's own frame for the pre-draft weeks is "lion season", when teams feed analysts narratives for strategic reasons. The title run is thick with top-30 visits and the GM's pre-draft press conference.

Vegas Nation - Raiders Football is the Las Vegas Review-Journal's beat reporters, Vinny Bonsignore and Adam Hill, and it sounds like it: conversational, corrective, grounded in what was said at practice that day. Its clips come from a Geno Smith season, with Pete Carroll hinting at more running to keep Smith out of harm's way, Smith conceding he has to improve after nine interceptions, and a question about why Jackson Powers-Johnson is not at center. City Cast Las Vegas has a clip on the same subject, with Heidi Fang reading the Raiders' bad season as a sign of deeper problems in the city.

Golden Knights and UNLV

Locked On Golden Knights - Daily Podcast On the Vegas Golden Knights follows the team game by game, and the episodes shown are a good stretch: "Playoff Bound!", "One point away from Pacific Division Title". In the clip from the Jets win, Tony Cardasco and Chris Gollick dwell on Mark Stone sitting at 73 points in 59 games, a hundred-point pace from a player who rarely finishes a season, and elsewhere credit John Tortorella with changing expectations by giving assistant coaches 25-to-30-minute practice blocks. They also weigh whether Vegas would have made the playoffs under Bruce Cassidy, and think so, with less comfort.

LETS RUN: A Las Vegas Sports Podcast is the college counterpart and the more emotional of the two. Jason W Kelly's show sits between analysis and fandom, quick with names and stats and openly disappointed or ecstatic as the week requires. One clip asks, "Does anyone actually want to win the Mountain West Conference in the year 2025?" and that is the register in a line. Another has UNLV's defense giving up 103 points at the Thomas and Mack Center; a third tracks the PAC-12 versus Mountain West lawsuit down to discovery rulings and board-director emails. The titles run from UNLV football expectations to whether Congress can save college sports.

The founding, retold

Two shows tell the same Flamingo story from different angles. The Jeff Does Vegas Podcast, in "From The Vault: Bugsy - Fact vs. Fiction", checks the film against the record: Billy Wilkerson conceived the Flamingo, not Siegel, and had spent $1.2 million before Siegel pushed costs past $6 million; the opening was not the Christmas Day flop of legend; and the Las Vegas Siegel first visited was not the dusty Western town the movie shows. Sin City Stories: Vegas True Crime tells Wilkerson's side as design: a casino at the hub of the hotel, no windows, no clocks, and no way to move through the building without passing the tables. Its other clips are the cases, a call to Steve Wynn at the Mirage that begins "We have your daughter", and more than $3 million gone from a Circus Circus armored truck in October 1993 without a shot fired. Jeff Does Vegas ranges wider, from the 1967 Orbit Inn bombing to an episode titled "N'Oh Canada - Why The Great White North Is Giving Up On Vegas".

360 Vegas does the corporate era, and does it around a table: informed people in quick handoffs, one setting up a fact and another reacting, with laughter and corrections in real time. The Kerkorian clip follows him from buying and reselling surplus military planes to owning an airline to renting 40 acres for $190,000 a year plus 15% of Caesars Palace earnings; another has Howard Hughes's 1967 purchase of the Desert Inn forcing Nevada to change its gaming-license rules for corporations. The same show will then report a $100 spin at Aria hitting a Dragon Link jackpot worth more than $2 million.

Mobbed Up: The Fight for Las Vegas, from the Review-Journal, lets the participants talk. Its clips are Oscar Goodman: arriving with Carolyn in August 1964 with $87 on a junket flight, and trying his first federal case in the old post office and courthouse that later became the Mob Museum, a case that started with $3,100 in an envelope. A bonus episode has Judge Claiborne confronting Ed Nigro after Nigro fired about 150 Aladdin employees tied to casino theft.

Living here

City Cast Las Vegas is the local news show, and its clips show how it works. Sonia Cho-Swanson brings in Miles Dixon of Nevada Grant Lab to explain what happens to Southern Nevada nonprofits when federal grants are cancelled and then restored, and Dixon's point is that the uncertainty does more damage than the lost money. The title run gives the range: "Is Vegas Running Out of Land for Housing?", "Could the Next Pandemic Start in Vegas?", "How to Prove You’re a Real Las Vegas Local".

On the Corner of Main Street is downtown's business show. Ronn Nicolli recounts moving from Ohio in 2001 after calling off his wedding a week before the ceremony, and building a casino marketing career on having no vices to pull him off course; Pompsie and Greta, who publish their slot sessions, explain why they post every one, losses included, and how a $3,000 camera dispute at The Cosmopolitan turned into a $10,000-a-night return visit. Titles take in Five Guys at The Plaza, Holly Madison and gambling's Black Book.

Selling Sin City is filed under real estate and hosted by the Jack Greenberg Group, but its clips are outings: the holiday lights at the Speedway, seen from the back of a truck, where the displays run from Halloween through Fourth of July fireworks to Raiders logos, UNLV and Hanukkah; Rail Explorers, whose Mary saw a pedal bike ride on a Korean soap opera and was in South Korea within six months; Tule Springs at Floyd Lamb Park, once a working ranch and partly a divorce ranch under Nevada's marriage laws. It sounds like locals recapping a weekend and then getting practical about ages and group sizes.

RJ Politics is the Review-Journal's Rory Appleton and Steve Sebelius, and the episodes on this page are from 2020 and 2021. Chris Carr of Trump Victory explains how Republican campaigns score every Nevada voter from zero to 100 using 15,000 state surveys; Sebelius argues that Supreme Court rules have become momentary justifications for whichever party holds power. Titles cover turmoil in the Clark County GOP, Sisolak on the death penalty and Lombardo running for governor.

The showrooms

Las Vegas Live with Adam Torres is the concierge: brisk, editorial, already holding an opinion, organized around what a thing is, where it is and what it costs. Its clips describe a touring Broadway musical at Reynolds Hall, a 2,050-seat hall at the Smith Center built in 2012 and fifteen minutes from the Strip; Illenium's Odyssey as a single immersive world built for Sphere rather than a standard residency; and EDC's thirtieth year, with 500,000 attendees, 200 artists, seven stages and a free public parade. Titles stack three bookings at a time, AC/DC at Allegiant Stadium, Backstreet Boys at Sphere, the World Series of Poker.

PodKats! Las Vegas Entertainment and The Talk About Las Vegas Podcast are the interview shows. PodKats! is the Review-Journal's John "Kats" Katsilometes, with episodes on this page from 2020 and 2021: Ken Henderson on designing Notoriety as a live music venue that happens to have a bar, which Larry Moss called "off Broadway" despite downtown's rough edges, and Anne Martinez on Saint Showgirl treating Las Vegas glamour as a professional calling. Ira Sternberg's show goes to whoever has a Vegas story: Jon McLaughlin on a non-single, "Acting", that drew 960 of roughly 1,000 fan comments on his album, and on songwriting as driving toward an office that moves every day; Patrick Lindsey on how NASCAR fans can build a family, premium or high-end weekend. Titles reach Art Manteris on sportsbooks, Jon Ralston on Harry Reid and Roger Gros on prediction markets.

Where to start

• For the Raiders: Vegas Nation - Raiders Football for reporting from the building, Bleav in Raiders for scheme, Locked On Raiders for the draft-week churn.
• For how the city was built: the two Flamingo tellings, The Jeff Does Vegas Podcast and Sin City Stories: Vegas True Crime, then 360 Vegas and Mobbed Up: The Fight for Las Vegas.
• For the city off the Strip: City Cast Las Vegas, then On the Corner of Main Street.
• For planning a visit: Las Vegas Live with Adam Torres.

The Las Vegas feed on this page plays clips from these shows.